Kirstie is leading a trek, but then gets trapped in a valley after a landslide. Trapped in the valley with her is a stallion and his band. The stallion is injured, and Kirstie is desperate to help him.

Jenny Oldfield (b.1949) must be a publisher’s dream. She can write for a variety of ages; she writes series at the drop of a hat; she can write in any currently fashionable idiom; is equally happy setting series in America and the UK, and is astonishingly prolific. She published her first book, Tomorrow Will Be My Dancing Day, in 1975, and since then has published over 160 books: a quite staggering total. Although much of her work is about animals, a sure seller with children for centuries, she has written series aimed at a wide variety of markets. 'I talk to my publisher,' she says, 'about the next big thing,' and it’s obviously very successful. She’s done historical fiction for adults, teen diary type fiction (Marsha Martinez) and the wicked boy (Totally Tom). She writes under pseudonyms too: Jasmine Oliver, Kate Pennington, Jodie Mellor, and Donna King. She has also written titles for the phenomenally successful Lucy Daniels Animal Ark series published by Hodder.

She has focused on the pony book market with several series: Half Moon Ranch, My Magical Pony, Black Pearl Ponies, and Stardust Stables (as Sable Hamilton). The Half Moon Ranch series is set in Colorado, on a ranch run by the Scott family. Kirstie Scott is the heroine of the series, which tends to focus on a different horse in each different title, whom Kirstie must save or rehabilitate. My Magical Pony is a fantasy series. Krista, the heroine, is a devoted attender at a local stables, but she’s helped in her adventures by Shining Star, a mystical pony who descends from the clouds, dispensing wisdom as he goes. The Dreamseeker trilogy is possibly not exclusively pony-orientated: it is about the young Sioux Four Winds, and his spirit horse Silver Cloud. The lengthy (and televised) Home Farm Twins series has several titles which are about horses or ponies, as does the Animal Alert series. Jenny Oldfield has also edited a book of horsey short stories for Kingfisher: Horse and Pony Stories.

Jenny Oldfield was born and brought up in Harrogate, studied English at Birmingham University, and taught before writing full time. She learned to ride so that she could research the Half Moon series and know what she was talking about. Six weeks before she left England for Colorado, she took riding lessons, and it must have paid off. She said: 'When you're writing for kids you have to have a good memory of childhood, so memory, observation, travel, reading, everything, there's never a moment where you're walking through a street and don't look at somebody and say I wonder what's going on there and store it and reuse it.' She’s certainly generated a lot from those first few riding lessons.

She is, I think, the most prolific pony author working in the UK today. Her output dwarfs those of her contemporaries. She will soon no doubt overtake Christine Pullein-Thompson’s 57, making her the author of more pony books than any other author in the UK.

She has been rather less prolific over recent years: three books under the Jodie Mellor pseudonym, two pony stories as Tina Nolan, and a retelling of As You Like It for A&C Black in 2009. She has started a new pony series, Black Pearl Ponies, the first of which were issued in 2011. It is another American-based series, for Hodder, featuring Keira and her life on a ranch, and appears now to have concluded after six titles.

Jenny Oldfield is now writing another series under the pseudonym Sable Hamilton. Again set in America, it’s a series set in a stunt riding stable. Stardust Stables provides trained horses and teenage stunt riders for the film industry: quite possibly a first in equine literature. As with all Oldfield books, it’s a rollicking read. Oldfield is an excellent plotter and storyteller, and if you want entertaining reading without angst, she’s your woman.

Finding the books
The majority are still in print. All are easy to find, and generally reasonably priced.

About Jane Badger

I’m a freelance writer, editor and proof reader. I’ve written Heroines on Horseback (2019), a gallop through the pony book in children’s fiction, and have written the world’s largest website on equine literature.

I've now started up a publishing company dedicated to bringing classic pony fiction back into print.